My rooftop patio is a nasty challenge for native plants. Six floors up, it is subject to whipping winds, searing heat, lashing storms, and of course, a perfectly calm, wonderful day or evening. It begs a floral setting. Last year I filled planters with annuals: climbing vines, petunias, vinca, etc, as I’ve always done in sensible ground level gardens.
Disaster! Disappointment! Death! Even the sweet peas didn’t take.
I wasn’t above just giving up and planting fake stuff and gluing the mess down, but then I discovered the lovely diminutive moss rose, a desert plant, small succulent leaves, short and stalky, tough as a Minnesota winter and continuously in bloom. Portulaca, some call it.
This year, I took the old dirt planters, added some sand to mimic desert soil, and planted a dozen or so seedlings.
The results were spectacular. Multi-colored blooms non-stop, I felt like a real gardener! I watered when I thought of it, and even added some of that blue nitrogen stuff.
But something else was happening. As if an apology for last year’s disaster, tiny vines began to appear among the moss roses. Sure enough, some voluntary Morning Glories were reappearing from last year's failed crop leftovers.
Today, they burst into a late August bloom, mixing in with their new sturdy, unselfish brothers, who had apparently shielded them sufficiently from the awful elements to allow them now to grow, perhaps to flourish.
I won’t make any philosophical observations about this pragmatic partnership, other than to observe that we’re always stronger together than we are alone.
I’ll just enjoy this lovely symbiosis on the roof.
